Deirdre and Alan Tollakson had planned to have their second child at home. They hadn’t planned to have her without their midwife.
Plans do go astray. And so, on Aug. 4, Alan Tollakson found himself delivering his own daughter. Ellie Ronan Tollakson came into the world four days early and after only an hour’s labor.
“It’s just amazing how fast things were happening,” said the new father, an Emporia sculptor.
Fast indeed. Deirdre Tollakson, a massage therapist, said she began feeling something around 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 3. At 11:30 p.m. she sent her husband out for groceries, a trip he made reluctantly and as quick as possible.
Around 12:30 a.m., the labor began.
The Tollaksons had called the midwife, but she lives near Augusta. By the time family friend Shari Sippola arrived around 1:20 a.m. to help, the midwife still wasn’t there — but Ellie nearly was.
“It was very calm in the room,” Sippola remembered. “The lights were low and some really nice music was playing. No one was panicking.”
“I wasn’t relaxed or calm,” Deirdre Tollakson corrected with a grin. “But it was good for me. ... It was a really relaxed atmosphere.”
Within five minutes of Sippola’s arrival, the baby had started crowning. Sippola quickly called the midwife and found she was still in Augusta — her assistant hadn’t arrived yet.
So Sippola stayed on the phone, relaying instructions from the midwife to Alan Tollakson as he waited to catch his daughter.
The head came out as far as the upper lip. He could see Ellie’s eyes facing him. Then the midwife wanted to know “Is the cord wrapped around the baby’s neck?” Unable to see, the sculptor felt around.
“I couldn’t feel a cord so it was ‘Not as far as I can tell,’” he said.
The midwife reassured him all was well, then told him to be ready to let the baby come out on the next contraction. Like everything else that night, it happened a little more quickly than expected.
“I’m sitting here waiting for the contraction and then in the next second, whoosh, she was flying out of there!” Alan Tollakson said. “It was like express delivery.”
The slippery baby went right through his hands. Thankfully, his wife was close to the floor so Ellie only had a couple of inches to drop.
“We checked her for carpet burns before anything else,” Deirdre Tollakson said.
No harm done. And it all happened so quietly, it didn’t even wake up their 4-year-old daughter Anya (who was also born at home). Usually a restless sleeper, Anya slept through to morning, when she got to meet her new baby sister.
Ellie was 8 pounds, 9 ounces at birth. The midwife afterward said that the two other Emporia births she had assisted at were also fast labors — one was 20 minutes, the other 50 minutes.
“I’m not going to go for the record,” Deirdre Tollakson chuckled.